Sonos will release a host of new updates for its Ace headphones, after they were caught up in the company’s disastrous app update.
The Ace headphones were first released almost exactly a year ago, after being announced in May 2024. They received positive reviews – but were immediately dragged into a major crisis for Sonos, which led to the company losing its chief executive among other changes.
The release of the Sonos Ace required an update to the app the company makes to control not only the headphones but all of its smart speakers. When that app update was released, it immediately broke many users’ setups.
In the year since, Sonos has been recovering from the problems. Its chief executive Patrick Spence has left the company, it has been forced to re-focus on fixing the app, and it has apologised to users a number of times.
Those problems meant that the headphones were somewhat overshadowed by the company’s other problems. But now it has released a host of new features aimed at putting the focus back on the Ace.
They include improved noise cancelling, a new feature that allows the headphones to model the room they are being used in to give the feeling that the sound is really being projected into it, and improved calling features. The headline feature of the Ace – which allows them to switch audio from a soundbar to the headphones, for a private experience while watching TV – can now also be used by two people at once, for when a couple might want to watch without disturbing their children, for instance.
Sonos said that the feature update was driven by a focus on ensuring that the headphones created “lasting value” and were a result of a “considered approach” that rejected “trend-driven obsolescence”, according to Jason White, Sonos’s head of software. “We built a platform that was powerful enough that we could deliver new features and functions through software with time,” he said.
“The company’s perspective is that we should narrow our focus and do those things as excellently as we can,” said Dana Krieger, vice president of design at Sonos. “We really want to make sure [releases] provide value when we do them, and not just put more churn and noise into the world.
